Coming Home
by dawnmarie dreaming
Summary: It only happened because he wasn't from around here. He didn't know what side of the town I was from. Once he joined our school, it all changed and there was no going back. It didn't matter who he knew me to be, only who they all thought I was.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

I didn't think we'd have a Labor Day weekend with us all home together ever again. Was that because I was too arrogant to believe I'd ever end up back here? Probably, but I chalked it up to my belief that Alice wouldn't ever come back from New York.

We'd been at The Downtowner for awhile already. I know this because I was drunk. Not just a little drunk either. Completely shitfaced. Yep that was me. I hadn't realized the degree of the situation until I'd gone to get us another round. I was fine getting to the bar and I didn't have a problem remembering which drinks I had to order. Mike asked me if I wanted Jessica to bring them out to me on her next trip through and I said "sure." Then I looked over at her bustling from table to table and realized that might not be for another forty-five minutes or so. The place had definitely filled up since we'd first gotten there and scored a table out on the back deck. I told him to lend me a tray and I'd carry them back myself. He looked at me skeptically and asked me if I was sure about that, which offended me a little. I waitressed and bartended for two and a half years while I was in college. I think I could handle twenty feet with one tray of drinks. Of course at that point I hadn't realized yet the state of my inebriation.

The moment of realization came when I felt the cold wetness spread across my jeans in the doorway of the back deck. I made it to the door without any problem, but somehow as I pushed it open with my shoulder, I looked down to see the drinks toppling from my tray. To this day I swear that I was holding that tray steady. In my drunken state I couldn't figure out why the hell the glasses were leaping off the tray like rats from a sinking ship. That was the moment of realization. In some small portion of my brain, I realized the amount of alcohol I had consumed was the reason the tray looked stable when it obviously was not and my mind voice said "you're drunk". But the bigger part of my brain was still confused as to why the glasses were falling off my unmoving tray. I glanced up in bewilderment to see Rosalie, Alice, and Angela in the corner table laughing at me. I shrugged and turned around to head back to the bar.

I wasn't too drunk to not feel embarrassed when I had to go back and ask Mike to remake our drinks. And I was a little sheepish when I suggested that Jessica bring them out to us when she had a chance. He was sweet about it, but he still gave me that bartender look I knew so well. The one I gave out to all the drunken idiots late in the evening when I was the one behind the bar, the only sober mind in a room full of pickled brains. _Fuck_. It was different on the receiving end. At least he didn't make me pay for them again. I tipped him heavily. I would have overcharged for that second round if I'd been the one mixing them.

I went back to the table empty handed and shrugged when Alice gave me that look wondering where the hell her drink was. "Jess is bringing 'em over in a bit," I said and looked away as she smirked and shook her head at me. I looked over at Rosalie, who was grinning but didn't look any more than slightly buzzed. Angela didn't look affected by the liquor at all. _What the fuck?_

"Why the fuck am I always the drunkest fucker at the table?" I asked to no one in particular.

Rosalie just shrugged off the question, recognizing it as the rhetorical question it was.

Angela, on the other hand, tried to figure it out. "How many have you had?" She asked.

"The same as you have, fucker." I snarled, because the truth was that we had ordered each round together, but for some reason I was at the point that I wouldn't know how many we'd had, and they weren't. And Alice was smaller than any of us and had been drinking doubles for each of my pussy drinks. I gave her a dirty look.

"You're just a lightweight, Swan. No need to be embarrassed by it." But the way she said it made it seem as though she was specifically pointing out that I should be embarrassed by it.

"Whatever. Twat-face." I flipped her the bird and she laughed at me. Jessica interrupted at that moment to deposit our drinks at the table. She gave me a pointed glance as she slid one over to me. I tried to bring up some hatred for her, but the fact was that I didn't have anywhere for the superiority to come from. She wasn't the only one stuck in this damn town doing a job she hadn't imagined when we were in high school. And I was the drunk piece of shit that had made her job harder by leaving a mess over in the doorway. I took the high road and slid a tip her way with a quiet thanks as I sipped my Tequila Sunrise. I needed my liqueur disguised as juice or I couldn't stand to drink it.

I glanced over at them while we all sat quietly for a moment lost in thought. I was usually a happy drunk, but tonight something was off. Maybe it was just how everything had somehow turned inside out and sitting here looking at all of them was making me face it in a way I hadn't before. I wasn't sure, but I knew well enough from being a bartender that evaluating the state of your life when you are three sheets to the wind is a horrible fucking idea.

The truth of the matter was that it wasn't supposed to be this way. I was the one who was supposed to leave this piece of shit town and never come back. Alice always talked about going to New York as soon as she graduated, but honestly, none of us actually believed her. She was Rosie's younger sister, two years behind us in high school. We hadn't really ever hung out back then, but she was around a lot: in the car after school when Rose would drive me home or around the house when I was hanging out at their place, hiding from my life. I always kind of got the impression that she didn't like me. Turns out that wasn't the case, but I never knew that until she came back from the Big Apple and called me up. I'd always kind of think of her as my best friend's sister, but we had become friends somehow too.

But being with her made me feel like a fraud. She admired me because I was genuine and honest and true to who I was despite what other people thought. But people got the impression that I was tough and strong and facing the world head on unafraid, when the truth of the matter was that was Alice. Alice who had left for New York right after graduation with hardly any money or plans. Alice who stayed out there living off Ramen Noodles and sleeping on friend's couches when she couldn't afford a place to stay. Alice who didn't give a fuck if she was going about things unconventionally. In the meantime, I was hiding out in my shell of toughness and fearlessness in fucking Forks. So yeah, looking at Alice made me feel like a big fucking fraud.

And don't get me started on Rosalie. I could hardly ever get her to leave the house in high school. She was such a homebody. I struck out on my own and went away to college while she stayed home and commuted to a college nearby so she could still live at home. Then, all of a sudden, I'm coming home and she's leaving the state to go to a different school to work on her Master's. Oh, and Angela, who was always the worst student of all of us, is heading there with her, because somewhere along the way she had grown a brain and joined the chemistry department too and was getting her Master's as well. Did I mention that they loved to travel all over during breaks? Yeah, New York on New Years, Las Vegas at Christmas, Jamaica for spring break.

It wasn't that I wasn't happy for them, because I was. These three women were my closest friends. They take me for who I am and love me despite of it. It was just a lot to take sometimes, when I'm the only one who was a complete fail at life. I was the one who always planned to go to college to escape this life. I was the one who always talked about seeing the world. I was the wild one. And yet it was them who had done all the things I was meant to do. It was me I was frustrated with, but it was easier to deflect those feelings onto them.

But I shook that shit off because they didn't deserve it. And like I said before, I'm smart enough to not partake in a pity party when I'm already FUBAR.

"Dude, did you bring me pictures of naked black penises?" I asked Alice, taking my mind off my shit.

"No."

"Fuck man, you promised!"

"No, actually I didn't. You assumed."

"I think you're mistaken. You tried to convince me that you had snapshots of all these huge chocolate sausages you tasted while involved in all your debauchery out east, and I told you I'd believe it when I saw it. To which you replied that I'd better be ready to eat my words of disbelief. Any intelligent person would infer that meant you were bringing me proof."

"Don't try to call yourself an intelligent person when you're slurring your words, twat-taco."

"Hey Rose, how do you feel about your baby sister being a bigger skank than me?" I asked, grinning over at her.

"Well, Bells, I usually try not to think about her sexual escapades at all, something I'm successful at whenever you're not around to bring it up."

"Yo, Ali. How is it that I've always been the one with the slutty reputation, when you're the one with all the experience?" I asked, and I was only half joking because it was true. People had always thought I was pretty loose and compared to Rosalie I was, but Alice had me beat by a long shot.

"I'm pretty sure that's because I've always been private when it comes to my bid'ness and you've always been an open book about pretty much every aspect of your life. It's one of your charms." She blew a kiss at me and I laughed at her, because that shit was so true. Alice was downright lip-locked when it came to anything involving her life, even things other people wouldn't really consider private.

"Dude, remember that rumor that went around about you and James?" Rosalie asked me.

"Which fucking rumor, Rosie? I lived in hell with that asshole for five years. There were more goddamn rumors than I care to remember about that sordid little affair." I snorted.

"The one where you blew him while he was taking a shit on the can," she said and then all three of them were laughing.

"Fuck, Swan. I forgot about that. What was that like anyway?"

"Fuck off, Albert. That wasn't true and you know it. Why the fuck would anybody ever think I'd do that? I mean, how would that be enjoyable for either of us? Shit. People are fucking stupid. They'll believe anything."

"Dude, I'll never forget the look on your face when Jasper asked about that. I swear he would never have worked up the nerve if it hadn't been like 4 in the morning."

"When were you ever hanging out with Jasper Whitlock at 4 in the morning?" Angela asked. J.P. Whitlock had been at the top of the high school food chain and I had decidedly not been. Despite the fact that we were chums in class and the hall for those last couple of years, it would have been unacceptable for us to have hung out.

"Science Olympiad," I responded. "The universal leveler of academic hierarchical systems."

"Yeah, we were cool enough to hang out with when we were away from all the preppy chippies at state championships. Especially Bella. Everyone loved her cuz she was so much fucking fun." Rose volunteered.

"Apparently not fun enough to hang out with when it would have injured their reputation at school. But I guess I must have been an open book if he felt like it was ok to ask me if I sucked James off while he was defecating. Even if it was 4 in the fucking morning."

"I swear to God, he looked like you killed his puppy when you told him he was fucking retarded to believe that shit. I think those boys liked the illusion that you were a complete sexual deviant." Rose winked at me and I flipped her the bird this time. Angela was a year above us and Alice two years behind, so a lot of this shit was only witnessed firsthand by Rosie. She held way too many of my secrets in her nicely manicured palm.

"Hey, Bella. Remember that time James threw Edward Cullen into the lockers and told him to stay away from you in front of the whole school? I never asked you what that was all about." Angela looked at me expectantly, waiting for an answer, but I felt like she'd sucker punched me.

Rose took one look of my face and answered for me. "Bella and Cullen had a thing the summer before he moved here. Oh, and a thing that Christmas break. And another thing at Easter break. Unfortunately, Bella and James were already together for the Christmas and Easter thing and she felt the need to confess about it after Cullen joined our illustrious little school."

"Fuck off, Rose. I didn't think James was stupid enough to do anything about it. I just figured I'd nip that shit in the bud before it got around some other way. Only Jamie would be clueless enough to think Edward Cullen would still be interested in me after he got a peek at his other options at Forks High."

Angela was looking at me with wide eyes and her mouth hanging open. Alice was looking pretty bored by the whole conversation, but really she had been too young to really remember the fucking ruckus it caused when Edward Cullen joined our small town. Apparently the whole Bella and Edward fling had remained between me, Edward, James, and Rosalie. It was pretty obvious by her reaction that Angela had no idea.

"Why the fuck would you bring that shit up now anyway, Ang? That's totally ancient history. I'm surprised you even remember that shit." I tried to be dismissive, but I saw a little tremble in my hand when I reached for my glass and downed the last of my drink. _Fuck._

"Uh, cuz he's standing right over there," she responded hesitantly, with a nod of her head to somewhere behind me.

My gaze flew first to Rosalie, only to see her eyes fly over my head and grow huge. I choked slightly on my gulp of drink and tried to keep myself from looking over my shoulder. It was futile. I nearly gave myself whiplash craning my neck to look behind me and my long hair flew out with enough force that I vaguely felt it slap Rose in the face.

And there, inside the building, standing against the wall with a beer clutched in his hand was Edward fucking Cullen in the flesh. I hadn't seen him in years, but it didn't stop my heart from stammering in my chest. He was wearing a black shirt that was kind of shiny and clingy. It strained a little around the roundness of his bicep, which I mentally acknowledged was bigger and more defined than the last time I saw him. His hair, however, was still the bronze, unruly chaos that I remembered. And from this angle I could just make out the uneven smirk he wore that had always melted my insides.

As though sensing someone looking at him he suddenly glanced up to scan the deck through the glass doors and I whipped my face back around before he could catch sight of me and found myself staring at my three girls around the table.

Alice looked slightly amused. Angela still looked totally dumbfounded. And Rosalie was looking concerned. Which means that my face must have looked at least seven different shades of fucked up.

My mouth opened and closed once or twice before I finally blurted out "I've gotta piss," as though I hadn't just gotten a fucking form of cardioversion just a moment before. I had just become acutely aware of how full my bladder was, but I didn't move. My body seemed to be having some trouble receiving messages from my brain. I blamed in on the alcohol. Self denial is truly a gift from God.

"You realize you're going to have to walk right by him to get to the bathroom, right?" Rosalie asked, and she sounded apologetic.

I felt the blood drain out of my face. I considered the fact that my jeans were still slightly damp from having dumped all our drinks down my front earlier. I could probably piss my pants and still be able to believably blame the accident from before, right? I glanced up at Rose and asked her the question with my eyes. She gave me a sympathetic look and shook her head so slightly that I'm sure no one else even noticed.

I thought about the fifty feet between me and the bathroom door. I thought about how dim the lights were inside the bar with all the smoke and bodies packed inside. I thought about all the years that had gone by since the last time I'd met that piercing green gaze. I thought about how different I was now, how young I'd been then. I thought about my hand wrapped around a silky, thick shaft for the first time. I thought of pumping that hand up and down timidly and being rewarded with a groan and a spurt of white, creamy liquid across the back of my palm. I thought of feeling large hands warmed by the sun sliding under my bathing suit and palming the small buds of my newly developing breasts. I thought of hard stomach muscles under my fingertips. I thought of laughing green eyes and unruly hair the color of pennies and an uneven smirk and thin blank shiny material stretched around a hard, defined bicep and I accepted it. No matter how my trip to the pisser turned out tonight, I was totally and completely fucked. And not in a good way.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

The year I turned 13 I threw a big sleepover birthday party at my house. I had just redone my room, changing from the powder blue that it had been since before I could remember to a pale, feminine pink. I know, right? But cut me some slack, I was 13 years old for shit's sake. The twin bed got traded in for a double and my mom gave me the tall dresser and matching dressing table with the big round mirror she'd had in her room. I got rid of all my stuffed animals, except of course my purple Popple, which I still sleep with every night. It was a physical representation of the transition from childhood to adolescence, which at the time felt like adulthood.

I invited pretty much anyone I considered even remotely a friend; surprisingly they all accepted. The day before the party I saw Jane Hytower in the hallway and impulsively asked her to come. She was even a bigger social outcast than me, not really a part of the clique I was on the fringes of, but not part of any other cliques either. She was a loner, and when I saw her standing by her 7th grade locker all by herself while a group of us giggled excitedly about the next night's plans, I couldn't seem to help myself. As everyone else headed off to class, I invited her over for the night. I don't know that I've ever seen eyes light up like that. I think it may have been the first time anyone had ever invited her to a group activity. I could relate.

So began the friendship between myself and Jane. Overnight we became "best" friends, as 13 year old girls tend to do. My older cousin Marcus had been staying with us that year as he did on and off, and Jane fell head over heels for him the second she came through my front door. Marcus, being the whore that he was, was never one to waste an opportunity. Operation get in the virgin's pants commenced immediately. Nothing more than harmless flirting occurred at my birthday party, but seeing him again plus her general loneliness was great motivation for Jane to quickly become my BFF.

What was my motivation? Well, when I first accepted her invitation for a sleepover the following weekend, it was simply my own loneliness. The second I walked into her house and caught sight of her older brother, Alec, heading up the stairs to his room it became a little more self-serving. This was why our friendship didn't last like mine and Rosalie's did. We were friends and confidantes and we both came from families that were fucked up in one way or another so we had a lot of common ground, but a lot of our relationship was based on a simple concept of access. When we hung at my house she had access to Marcus. When I was at her place, I had access to Alec.

Jane was a year older than me, Alec five years my senior. My birthday was near the end of the school year, so I met him and our "relationship" (for lack of a better word) spanned most of the summer between 7th and 8th grade. Jane's mother hated me. She said my family was from the wrong side of town, but only when I wasn't around. When I was she was so condescendingly snide that I wanted to smack the thick layer of make-up she always wore right off her face. It was especially ironic since she and her husband were both closet alcoholics and seemed to really hate each other, but stayed together for appearance's sake. In order to bribe her into letting us have a sleepover, Jane and I would clean the entire house, including vacuuming and mopping. It was my summer of slave labor.

Obviously she wouldn't have approved of me as a girlfriend for her golden boy, and she made no secret of the fact that she favored Alec over Jane. Like the old dog she was, she seemed to have a sixth sense for the attraction between Alec and myself; she watched us like hawks whenever I was in the same room as him. It's kind of funny to me now to think of how she seemed worried that I was going to lure him into debauchery with my feminine wiles. I was an inexperienced virgin at the time and he certainly was not. Her attitude just forced us to be extra-stealthy in our contact, which just added to the romance in my 13 year old mind. An illicit love affair, forbidden by our parents, fighting against all adversity to lead to our happily ever after. Yeah, I can admit now how totally fucking naïve I was at some point in my life. 

Our entire relationship was one big cliché. Alec wanted into my pants in the worst way. I still thought I would save myself for marriage. I remember we'd talk on the phone at night after his mother went to sleep, but I can't remember for the life of me what we could possibly have talked about. Probably a lot of blithering about how much we loved and missed each other.

When together, it was always the same: him pushing against the limits I'd set, me constantly saying no, but going a little further every time. He'd show up at my window late at night and I'd sneak out to roll around in the grass in the back yard. He'd drive over to my house during the day and I'd go out to his car to mess around in the backseat. We'd wait until his mother was passed out drunk, and then he'd tap the wall between his and Jane's rooms as the all clear to sneak into his bed to fool around.

He used all the lame-ass lines that I was warned about too late for the knowledge to actually have helped me out. "I love you so much." "It hurts me so bad when we have to stop." "If you loved me, you'd show me." "You know I can get really sick from stopping without release?" Did I mention that he was almost always in some state of drunkenness? Yeah, the alcoholism gene was really strongly expressed in the Hytower family. Jane had some issues with it later in life. I still get nauseated by the smell of alcohol breath mixed with toothpaste.

The beginning of the demise of our _love_ – hopefully you can hear the sarcasm there – happened near midsummer. On one particular evening, we had not managed to make it all the way to Alec's bed. Instead we were lying on his carpet not far from his door. It was the same old shit, different night: Alec drunk as a skunk and desperately fondling the little bit of breast that I had and declaring his love for me as he tried to get his hand down my sleep shorts. My protests repeated timidly while I tried to keep his hands above my waste. In the end I seemed to lose the battle, mainly because I thought I loved him and was desperately afraid that he'd get sick of my always denying him. He got my shorts pulled down and shoved his penis between my thighs, in and out, in and out, while I laid there complacently, vaguely wondering what he was doing. Suddenly, he pulled back from me and I felt him twitching against my lower thigh while wetness spread across my leg.

In some recess of my mind, I guess I understood that he had ejaculated, but really I didn't know enough to label it with terms like coming or getting off. He got off me and crawled into bed. I went back down to Jane's room and crawled in with her. She took one look at my face and asked me what happened. I responded with, "I think I just had sex with your brother."

After a bit I went back in with Alec. I sat down at the edge of the bed and looked down at him in the darkness. I finally worked up the nerve to ask him if we'd had sex. He said yeah. I put my head on his chest and started to cry a little. He asked what was wrong. I told him I thought 13 was a little too young to have lost my virginity. He patted my back a couple of times and told me he was really tired. I went back to Jane's room and she held me until I fell asleep.

It wasn't until later, after I'd actually had something in my vagina for the first time – James' finger – that I realized I hadn't had sex with Alec. He'd just masturbated himself using my thighs. I wondered for a long time if he realized that we hadn't had sex and just said we did in hopes that I would give it up more freely then, or if he was really too drunk to know the difference. In the end I decided on the latter, because after that night, he hardly ever called anymore. I'm pretty sure he thought he'd gotten what he was after. When I called him, our conversations were short and unfulfilling. He stopped responding when I'd tap our signal on the wall between his and Jane's room. If I kept trying I'd hear his voice through the wall telling us irritably to knock it off. He never came right out and said he was done with me; he just started ignoring me and brushing me off.

Around the same time, my mother's friend Esme asked me if I could stay with her for the rest of the summer to watch her daughter Bree. Esme's son, Emmett, a tall skinny nerdy guy six years my senior, was going overseas to see his father for a few weeks. Bree was 8 and couldn't go because Esme didn't trust her ex-husband to actually send her back when the summer was over. Bree needed more of a companion to keep her occupied and out of trouble than she needed a babysitter, so Esme hired me. She talked my mom into letting me move into Emmett's room for those weeks so I wouldn't have to get up early to be there when Esme left for work. I was surprised that my mother agreed, but such was the power of friendship. She didn't trust me much, but she trusted Esme just fine.

My summer was coming to a close. I was heartbroken for the first time in my life, believing I had given myself to a boy who suddenly wanted nothing to do with me. I was desperately trying to hang on to him, even as he started dating a girl only two years younger, a girl his mother approved of, a girl from the right side of town. I was calling him at night and then crying myself to sleep when he'd tell me he couldn't talk. I was depressed and feeling pretty shitty about myself. And that was when I met Emmett and Bree's cousin, Edward Cullen.

All this sordid ancient history went spiraling through my mind as I made my way across the deck towards the bathroom, veering for the doors further away from where Edward was leaning against the inside wall talking to a group of friends, a longneck clutched in his hand. Despite my inebriated state, I was desperately trying to figure out why he still had this effect on me after so many years had gone by.

I replayed the scene when I first saw him in my mind as I went, making sure to keep my hair down over the side of my face enough to block it from his view while still being able to keep him in my periphery vision.

I had been in the back sun porch of Esme's house playing Mario Brothers with Bree. Emmett was due to leave in a couple of days. I had already started staying the nights over, because Esme was working and Emmett didn't want to have to deal with Bree. It was fairly early still, and I hadn't bothered to change out of my long nightshirt or grab a shower yet. I distinctly remember having not washed my hair yet that day, just wet it down and pinned some back on one side. It was permed back then and my bangs had gotten long, so I had it parted on the side and they hung partially obscuring one eye. I remember all this because when I heard Emmett speaking to someone in the kitchen and stood up with the Nintendo controller in my hand to investigate, I was stunned to see a gorgeous boy standing in the doorway looking back at me and immediately evaluated how much of a mess I must look in my head while we stared at each other. He actually looked just as stunned to see me.

I was vulnerable and broken, having just been used and thrown away like the garbage Mrs. Hytower thought I was and ripe for being swept off my feet by the smallest gesture. Edward was ethereally beautiful, bathed in a ray of sun from the windows that glinted off his bronze hair, and so completely out of my league but looking at me like he hadn't quite figured that out yet. So I understand completely why my heart started racing and the blood suffused my cheeks and my palms started sweating and I had that strange sensation of falling even though the floor was still planted firmly beneath my bare feet.

What I didn't understand was why nine years later, when I was no longer vulnerable or broken or even romantic in any way, seeing him for the first time in at least six years had my heart racing and blood suffusing my cheeks and my palms sweating and feeling the sensation of falling even though the floor was still planted firmly beneath my sandaled feet.

I made it into the women's bathroom still pondering this whole conundrum. Sometime during my record breaking pee, I chalked it up to a combination of the alcohol in my system and the suddenness of his appearance after all these years. Certainly it couldn't be anything other than that. Thirteen year old Bella Swan might very well have reacted with her heart on her sleeve, but twenty-two year old Bella Swan wasn't even sure if she still had a heart. If I did, it certainly wasn't on my fucking sleeve. It was buried down somewhere behind some pretty impenetrable walls where even I couldn't reach it. And that's where it was staying.

After that little fortifying pep talk, I washed my hands and exited the bathroom, again careful to keep my face hidden behind my thick hair. I was only feet from the door to the outside deck, congratulating myself on having made the trek unseen, without too much obnoxious peeking at Edward Cullen, and certainly no embarrassing moments when I suddenly heard, "Holy Shit! Bella Swan!" shouted across the room.

I recognized the voice immediately and a huge smile lit up my face even as my stomach clenched into a knot and my many Tequila Sunrises threatened to make a reappearance. I turned, willing my eyes to land on the owner of the voice and no one else, but dammit if Jasper P Whitlock wasn't standing right next to Edward with his arm around his shoulders. Honestly, fuck my life.

My eyes locked with Edward's like they were bright green planets with their very own force field and his looked as wide as mine felt. Suddenly it was déjà vu; we stared at each other and I mentally assessed the fact that I wasn't wearing any make-up and had my favorite worn-in jeans and faded Ramones T-shirt on and he was still perfect and way out of my league. I had a moment to wonder where the hell the ray of sunlight bathing him and tinting off his bronze hair was coming from when it was pitch-fucking-black outside, before I realized I was combining memory and reality in my mind.

I tore my gaze away from him and settled it on Jasper, my mouth again stretching into a welcoming grin as he began moving toward me through the crowd. "JP!" I squealed as he reached me, planting a big kiss on my lips and sweeping me up into his arms to twirl me around.

I was fucking thrilled to see Jasper, as I hadn't seen him since we graduated but I was also having a bit of trouble breathing because I knew my cover was totally blown. The chances of me getting out of here without talking to Edward were slim to fucking none now. And I so did not want to talk to him. OK. That was an utter fucking lie. I wanted to talk to him so bad I could taste it on my tongue. I wanted to talk to him and touch him and kiss him and take him home and tear off all his clothes and lick him from head to toe. And I was drunk. Which meant I was going to have a whole lot of trouble not telling him exactly that. Yeah, I was so fucked.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

I met and fell in love with Jasper Peter Whitlock in kindergarten. I used to chug my milk at story time; I never could stand warm milk. Jasper noticed and pretty soon we had a regular date – first the milk race (which I almost always won) and then sitting on the carpet circle shoulder to shoulder, our little hands clasped together to listen to the story. Back then, before my parents divorced and my grandpa dropped me like a hooker on Sunday morning, he used to take me ice skating every Friday night. It was the highlight of my week because Jasper's daddy used to bring him too. One night he gave me a bunny rabbit Shrinky Dink he'd made. It was connected to a yellow ribbon and I wore it around my neck every day until the loop broke. I still have it tucked away in a jewelry box in my room: a token from a time when love was as simple as little plastic bunnies on ribbons.

Some people probably scoff at the idea of falling in love at five years old. I scoff right back. I was certain that I was going to marry him someday, and I held onto that dream all the way through sixth grade. Of course, our romance only lasted through kindergarten. After that cliques started to form and lines were drawn in the sand determining who you could and could not date: the social hierarchy that would hold us in its grasp until after graduation. Still, I loved him from afar until towards the end of elementary school. By then I had begun to accept the reality that was my life. He was one of the golden boys and I was the poor girl with divorced parents and second-hand clothes paid for by state assistance programs. I was the easiest target for mean girls, because I was sweet and nice and I wanted to be liked so badly that I would forgive anything. I was never mean to anyone because I knew too well how it felt to be on the receiving end. I might as well have painted a big red bull's eye on my back. So I gave my dreams of Jasper up and I started looking at boys who were closer to my league.

By the time we both joined the Science Olympiad team in our junior year, I was able to just enjoy his company without the slightest twinge of desire for anything else. But we got along so well that I always had to wonder if maybe we couldn't have been something of a fairytale if I hadn't been so outcast by all our classmates. But of course this was all ancient history now. We were adults. He could shout my name across a crowded room with nothing short of absolute joy and there wasn't anybody around to judge him for it.

Still, knowing that didn't stop my natural reaction to scan the room for disapproving snobs, and I had to push that shit away. I smiled my full smile – the one that lights up my face and shows all my teeth and I hollered "JP" at the top of my lungs, because I'm the only one who's ever been allowed to call him that.

Which brings me to where we are now – me planted on a table, my legs on either side of Jasper's lap with his hands on my hips and mine moving restlessly from his shoulders to his hair to the table to my own hair and then back again. I was hoping that I just looked drunk and not as nervous as I was. Edward hadn't followed us over to the table; he was still standing over by the wall talking with a group of mostly girls, but I could feel his eyes on me every so often. I was trying to keep up the pretense that I wasn't even remotely interested in his presence, but I don't know how successful I was being. Luckily, alcohol makes me flush red because otherwise I think my blush would have given me away.

"So what the hell are you doing home, Bella?" JP asked and I tried to turn my full attention back to him.

"Oh, um, I've been here for a year and a half." I answered, feeling foolish by my admission.

"What happened to college? Weren't you going to become a famous actress and win an Oscar and shit?"

"That was the plan." I answered again, hoping he'd get the hint and change the subject.

"Well, what happened to the plan?"

"Well, let's see. Everything was going pretty well. I took my first acting class and it was awesome. I really felt like I was where I was supposed to be, you know? And then I had to take a bunch of bogus classes. General studies and shit. And other theater classes. Stage Design. History of Theater. That kind of crap." Shit, I so didn't want to get into my utter failure at life right now. But Jasper was sitting there, looking so earnest and interested. And he'd always been so freaking easy to talk to. "So it ended up being a good year and a half before my next acting class. It was a Shakespeare acting class and I was really excited, 'cuz you know how much I love Shakespeare." And then I stopped again, because I hated even thinking about this.

But Jasper has always seemed to be able to sense my emotions better than most people. He got serious and squeezed my hips a little. "So what happened?"

"I fucking sucked. That's what happened."

"I find that really hard to believe."

"It's true. I mean, that was the first acting class I took that was restricted to only theater majors. So I had been pretty insulated from the level of competition there was. But all the students in class had already acted in some plays and knew each other and the professor. So I felt like I had to prove myself more than the others. And I had a lot more trouble acting out Shakespeare than I thought I would. I mean, I've always understood it so well, but trying to put emotion behind those words, ugh. It didn't seem to matter that I knew what the speaker was feeling. And the prof was such an asshole! Really light on the praise and heavy on the criticism. He made me so damn nervous. And because I was nervous, it was harder to perform. The more nervous I was, the worse I was, the more critical he got – and I'm talking ripping you down in front of everyone – and it just made me even more nervous. Like a freaking vicious cycle of hell until finally I felt so wooden on stage it was a miracle I could even move. I just wanted the floor to just swallow me up. Fuck." I sighed and snagged the beer on the table by us – which might have belonged to anyone – and took a swig.

"The high point was him telling me – while I was standing up on stage in front of everyone – that I was cute enough, but if I didn't start training my voice I'd never get a job unless it was for comic relief, 'cuz my voice was so nasally and annoying. Oh, and he casted me as The Fool in King Lear. Could he have been any more transparent? I ended the semester crying in his office while we discussed other opportunities for me in theater, like directing. That was the nicest he was to me all semester."

"Wow. That's bullshit. What a fucktard." Jasper actually looked a little pissed on my behalf, which made me smile.

"Honestly, it was probably better to hear it then, not wait until I headed off to the big time and ended up turning tricks on the street corner. Or starring in 'Bella of the Balls' or some shit." That got a snort out of him.

"Ok. We'll agree to disagree over that. But it doesn't explain what you've been doing here for the last year."

"Nothing. I've been doing nothing. After that conference I came home for Christmas and I just ended up staying. I wasn't sure what I was doing any more. My plan was shot to shit. I had a butt-load of credit card debt. And I didn't want to waste tuition money while I figured out what I was going to do. And I just haven't gone back yet." Wow, when you put it that way, I sounded really fucking pathetic.

"You know, of all the people in our class, you were the last person I would have picked to quit and crawl back here. I mean, it doesn't surprise me much to see Mike behind the bar and Jessica shaking her ass and waiting tables. But it's a damn shame to see you here cooling your heels, Swan. What a fucking waste."

I drew in a breath, mainly just to cushion the blow because I had no idea what I was going to respond with – he had basically voiced every fear and insecurity that had been fermenting in my mind since I left school – but then it got lodged in my throat when I heard a familiar voice just behind me.

"What's a fucking waste?" Shit. His voice was just as I remembered it. Low and soft and smooth and velvet. Jesus, did my nipples just get hard? That's a new development.

I looked at Jasper, and my eyes felt too wide in my face. He looked at me and just grinned. "It's a fucking waste that Bella just finished off my beer. I'm giving up my booze and I'm not even going to score some tail."

I smirked and winked at him. "What makes you think you're not gonna score some tail Whitlock?"

"Bella, baby. Don't tease." He looked around me at Edward. "Edward, do you know Bella? We graduated together." I had to look around at Edward then and he was staring at me intently. If possible even more heat rose to my cheeks.

"I remember," he said softly, and in those two little words I heard so much more. And suddenly I was remembering. Remembering the sound of his laughter in my ear. Remembering the feel of his body lying against mine on the couch. Remembering the way his lips brushed lightly against the skin at the nape of my neck. Remembering _him_.

"Edward." I said by way of greeting and was proud when my voice didn't waiver. Then I ruined it by glancing down at his left hand for a ring. And sighing when I didn't see one.

He looked at me and gave me one raised eyebrow in inquiry. I turned away and looked back at Jasper, hoping Edward would get the hint and move on. "So, how's med school?" I asked him, 'cuz that had been Jasper's plan since we were babies. Jasper looked a little sheepish, but I was distracted by the sound of a chair being pulled around the table. Edward appeared in my vision, twirling the chair around and dropping it next to Jasper, before plopping down in it backwards, his arms resting on the back as he glanced up at me. I was going to have a real tough time not looking at him if he was going to sit right in front of me like that. Where the hell was Rosalie? She should have been here by now to save me from myself.

"Ugh. Med school. I might need another drink if we're gonna start talking about that," Jasper responded.

"Another drink sounds fan-fucking-tastic," I concurred, because if Edward was going to insist on looking up at me through his thick lashes I was going to need a fuck-ton of alcohol. Jasper popped up out of his chair so quickly that he almost bashed his head against my chin. He caught himself on the table, leaning into me. I leaned backwards, trying to keep our faces from smashing together but ended up losing my balance and falling gracelessly back across the table. I snorted at myself, imaging how bad this looked – me lying across the table and Jasper perched above me. We were about to get kicked out of here for lewd behavior before we even had a chance to actually have a lewd thought. Then I started laughing.

"What's so funny, Swan?" Jasper asked, his face just above mine.

"Lewd."

"What?"

"Lewd."

"What's lewd?"

"We are."

"We are what?"

"Lewd. It's a funny word. It rhymes with nude. It would be lewd to be nude." I giggled at my own cleverness. Jasper gave me a funny look and then started laughing.

"Wow. I've never seen you drunk before, Bella," Edward said quietly. That sobered me right up. Because he hadn't seen me drunk, but he had seen me lewd and mostly-nude. I struggled to sit up and Jasper gave me a quick hand. My eyes clashed with Edward's as I came upright, and my breath caught. It looked like he was remembering me lewd and nude as well. Jesus. Danger Will Robinson.

Jasper went to step away from me, and in a surprisingly ninja-quick move for my state of inebriation, I caught his wrist. "Where are you going?" I asked almost frantically.

"You said we needed more drinks," he replied. Shit.

"I didn't mean for you to get them," I said and realized I sounded a little stupid.

Jasper mistook my meaning though. "Don't worry about it. You can get next round. I'll be right back." He took a step away, then stopped and turned back. "What were you drinking before you finished off my beer?" He asked with a smirk.

I couldn't help smiling back at him. "Just grab me a Smirnoff Ice." I looked down at Edward. He was still staring at me, his brilliant green eyes alight with a bit of fire. "Better get me a shot of Tequila too Jazz," I told him, eyes still locked with Edward's. Where the fuck was Rose?


End file.
